"That would not serve, my friend, so why risk it?" Gellor said softly.
Gord shook the hands of the others – Chert, the bard, Thatch, and then little Shad. "You kill some for me!" the boy said earnestly, and they all laughed.
Without further ado, Gord left. He went on foot, carrying his weapons and little else. The forest would provide for him. When the dwarf had begun to move at night, they thought they had lost the game. Chert was unable to see to travel and fight in darkness, for he had no magical sight as did his adult comrades. The lads needed tending. Something had to be found to slow, if not halt, the humanoid band that surrounded and protected the dwarf and his prize. Then Gord had decided to experiment.
The Catlord had told him that the ring he wore conveyed the power of lycanthropy, and that Gord could assume cat-form at will. The other powers of the ring worked, and Gord had no reason to doubt the Master Cat's word about form change. It was one thing to play at being a cat, to call oneself "Blackcat" and be a cat-burglar. It was quite another to actually become a genuine leopard – or even a domestic cat. Gord had just never wished to be anything other than his human self. But desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. Without telling his companions, the young thief had slipped away and tried the power of the ring. It worked, of course. The transformation took only a minute, and it was only slightly painful. Everything he wore simply became part of his new form somehow – clothing and boots, weapons, everything.
Gord could see parts of his new body. He was a cat, a big leopard with inky coat and long tail. Gord-the-leopard had padded to a nearby pool and peered at his reflection in the water. He looked splendid, handsome! Green eyes, long whiskers, a long, pinkish-red tongue, and huge fangs of gleaming white. How nice it would be to eat some fresh meat, drink from the pool here, and then gaze at his reflection until sleep came. There was a broad, comfortable-looking limb nearby where he could rest, too.
Gord had had to jerk his mind back quickly. How easy it was to fall into the thinking of the form one had assumed – and what would happen if he allowed this to occur? Perhaps he would take animal form more and more, eventually living out his life as leopard, not man. Gord shuddered and willed himself back to his own shape. In a minute he was human again, clothed and equipped as before.
As he stood pondering this, Gord recalled the feeling of being a large, powerful cat. He wanted to go back to that form, try the feline muscles, bound and spring, climb and hunt. To see and experience the world as a leopard was an interesting desire. Well, so was drinking alcohol, in a far different but similarly insidious way; and the vapors of herbs, fungi-eating, and extractions of certain other substances all had lures that ensnared some humans. Gord could resist these habits and addictions because he enjoyed life without them. He knew he must do the same with respect to this human-to-cat power he possessed. It must become a tool used only for purposes necessary to some cause, and used only when Gord must.
The others heard the news with excitement, not having any of the reservations that Gord did. When he told them of the strange feelings the change evoked within him, Gellor had shrugged them off and Chert had told him to enjoy. Upon reconsideration, he realized that druids and magic-users assumed many sorts of forms on a regular basis. Still, this wasn't lycanthropy, was it? Then Gellor had pointed out that the ring had a magical power, so strictly speaking there was no shape-shifting within Gord, and the whole was less lycanthropic than Curley's ability to become a hawk or a turtle for a brief time. Gord gave up his reservations.
He had stalked through the night, bounding along the forest floor, climbing trees and using branches as a roadway, slipping through places two-leggers would find impossible. It had been easy to move ahead of the mass of smelly, noisy humanoids and the gabbling ape-creatures who swung clumsily through the branches. It had been the simplest of things to catch and kill the first losel, for the stupid creature didn't know enough to flee from certain death. Had it been leopard slaying baboon or human slaying ore? No matter. When the clubs and small bolts had struck him, Gord-the-leopard felt only small thumps and fly-bites. Momentary fear for his safety gave way to feelings of invulnerability and triumph. Now he could singlehandedly slay the whole filthy tribe of two-leggers and get the prize. He had laughed full in the face of one gaping losel, causing it to leap groundward, chattering in fear.
Reason returned when he saw a stick-thin elfin robes that bespoke magic staring upward at him sometime later. Cat-contempt for so puny a creature caused him to stare haughtily down as the puny thing began muttering softly and waving his arms. Gord's ears heard every sound the creature made, and then the human part of Gord's mind panicked, and the cat portion reacted by leaping away.
Just in time, that great spring. It carried him across some thirty feet to another tree limb slightly below the one he'd been upon, and along it to another, all in a second. Behind his black-furred tail there was a flash and sizzle of energy, as a lightning stroke hit the spot where his graceful form had lain only a second ago, and losels screamed and fell like ripe fruit from the struck tree. Thereafter Gord made an effort, and the human mind always controlled the leopard brain.
Gord pondered, briefly, the dichotomy of thinking. Of course! The power of shapechanging would be useless if the ability to properly utilize the new form were missing. Simplicity itself. The trick was to keep the real mind in power while allowing the new one to handle the body as it was designed to control. Human mind directs, cat mind operates. Easy to visualize, difficult in the extreme to accomplish. Too much direction, and the cat brain was overridden. Then the leopard body became clumsy and unable to perform its natural functioning. On the other hand, too little monitoring, too much freedom, and the cat took over the human portion, submerging it to little more than a vague memory or relegating it to a sort of conscience that could do little but scold or praise. It took an hour, but eventually Gord managed to get the correct balance.
By men the company of humanoids had been halted, a perimeter ringed with guards, and alert leaders stationed where they could protect the center of the encampment. Gord-the-leopard managed to harass the ape-ores, but the exercise was useless. When he saw the leaders of the company gathering to hold some sort of council, he acted at once.
If he could assume leopard form so easily, why not that of a small domestic cat? Springing to the ground, Gord concentrated on shifting from leopard to torn, and in the usual time he was as he wished – a rather large one, but a tomcat nevertheless. In this form he had crept through the camp to where he could hear the words of the group gathered. Gord-the-cat arrived just at the conclusion of the meeting. He heard the dwarf tell the huge, heavily armored gnoll who stood respectfully there that he was to block the path. At least that's what it seemed to be, for Gord had scant proficiency with the bastard tongue of ores and gnolls and the rest of the humanoid species.
The gnoll chief was reluctant and argued. Obmi insisted, telling him that only a weak force could be expected – something like "few, soft men who you will kill and loot" were more like the exact terms the dwarf used. He clinched the whole by mentioning that the cat-devil would follow Obmi and the losels. Then gnoll had grinned hideously in agreement and gone off.
"The scouting group will ride well in advance tomorrow morning," the gaunt elf called Keak had said with a cackle.
"Yes, that is so," the dwarf replied, and then Obmi smiled for the first time since Gord-the-cat had been watching, crouched in the shadows beneath a low shrub.
"Klabdul," Keak had said with a friendly arm around the half-orc's wide shoulders, "you must come into our tent to get special instructions about your role as chief of the scouting force!''